Summer School Teachers (1975)

A follow up to The Student Teachers (1973), Summer School Teachers (1975) is basically more of the same thing, albeit with a different cast, (although Dick Miller plays the school coach in both films).  Indeed, while watching it, there were times when I was hard pressed to remember which of the two films I was watching, so similar many of the plot elements and scenarios in Summer School Teachers were to those in its predecessor.  Following New World's established and successful 'three girls' formula, this one features three friends and newly qualified teachers from rural Iowa who go to LA to teach summer school at a high school.  As before, the film then settles into an episodic format, as each of the girl's have various experiences, including posing for nude photographs, getting involved with a student and coaching a girl's football team.  The football team story - through which the teachers uncover fraudulent use of school funds by the coach - and the involvement with a student - which leads to the breaking up of a car theft ring run by the chairman of the school board - provide the main ongoing plot threads.  

New World regular Barbara Peeters takes the directorial reins, moving everything at sufficient pace that the viewer doesn't have too much time to worry about the plot's absurdities and her script ensures that, despite the obligatory female nudity, a strong feminist sub-text is present.  The main action sequence, involving a lengthy car chase, is, bearing in mind the budget, very well staged.  Of the leads, Candice Rialson, as the sports teacher organising the girls' football team, who starred in Hollywood Boulevard the following year, gives the stand out performance.  The film is very much of its era - I very much doubt that any comedy film these days would get away with a plot in which a teacher enters into a relationship with a student yet is still portrayed as a sympathetic character and doesn't suffer dire consequences.  *To be fair, like his classmates, the student in question appears to be at least twenty five).  Like all of New World's 'three girls' pictures - whether they are about nurses, models, air hostesses or teachers - Summer School Teachers is simultaneously utterly inconsequential and smoothly enjoyable.